Sleepovers

Recently my wife suggested to me that our kids should not be
participating in the age-old tradition of sleepovers. Her reasoning was that the
world is not as innocent a place as it used to be and you just can’t trust your
child’s well-being to another parent’s sense of “acceptable behavior”. At first
I couldn’t wrap my head around her idea, but there really was no response I
could come up with that didn’t translate to “Come on, let’s put our children in
danger so they can have a little fun”. Ultimately I agreed with this, though I can’t
say my first thought wasn’t something along the lines of, “But it’s pretty much
the best part of having friends! We can’t deprive our kids of one of THE seminal
childhood experiences!” This reaction was based on how I had romanticized the experience
of the sleepovers from my youth, but what wasn’t to love?

As a kid, the invitation to a sleepover was a joyous
experience rivaled only by getting free tickets to Disneyland. It was a sign of
true friendship for a buddy to want to spend 12+ hours hanging out, with no
promise of how many of those dozen we would spend sleeping. By the same token,
if a “friend” rejected the idea of sleeping over at my house because “there’s
nothing to do there”, it could be a hard blow. But the situation could just as
quickly be turned around if they suggested bringing your sleeping bag to their
place. Yeah, scheduling the sleepover was a real rollercoaster ride. The one on
one sleepovers with my buddy Erik usually went something like this.

My Mom would drop me off at Erik’s house around 6pm with a change of clothes and my green Coleman sleeping bag, which was really more
appropriate for camping than a sleepover (most kids had an awesome Super Mario
Brothers or Ninja Turtles bag), but it got the job done. From there we would either go into his
kitchen (they had an ice & water dispenser in their fridge door, so fancy!) where a
pizza would be waiting or we would head out to a restaurant for our meal (what
luxury!). I have to say I couldn’t wait to go out to dinner with them, as my Mom
lovingly supplied home-cooked meals the majority of my life, so even McDonald’s
was a real treat.

I remember one outing to a McDonald’s with a 50’s theme that
had just been built down the street.
When we got our Happy Meals an awesome surprise was found within, Super
Looney Tunes figures! This was an amazing series of toys that reimagined Bugs
Bunny, Daffy Duck, Taz and the obscure, Petunia Pig as Superman, Batman, The
Flash and Wonder Woman respectively. You started with normal figure of the
famous animated characters, then snapped-on the super hero costume over the
top. Plus they came with a short comic you could color in that showed the
cartoon heroes in action. It was probably the most unique set of Happy Meal
toys next to the Changeables, in my opinion. I got Taz-Flash that night and was pretty excited. Anyway, once we got our toys we
headed back to home base to play video games.

Batman, Teenage Mutant NinjaTurtles and Robocop were always
the top choices for Nintendo time. There was something about playing violent
video games at 9pm that just seemed so dangerous, even if Robocop’s power-ups
consisted of baby food jars. Hey, weekday bed time was 8:30pm, so every minute
passed was a walk on the wild side! When we got tired of bashing pixelated bad
guys, the next stop was Erik’s action figure closet. I’m not kidding, the kid
had a literal half of a 2 sided closet stacked with action figures!

Everything from Silverhawks, to Aliens, to Sky Riders were
at our disposal. We usually went with G.I. Joes, where Erik would choose Snake
Eyes and I chose his nemesis, Storm Shadow. I had never really paid attention
to the white-clad ninja’s allegiance during my sporadic viewings of the
cartoon. He wore white so he was a good guy in my mind and the silent
ninja-in-black was obviously the evil martial arts master. It didn’t matter
much because the real fun was the ultimate playset, the waterfall Jacuzzi!

I can’t count how many “Jungle Ops” we engaged in while
immersed in the watery wonderland. It looked like a set out of Predator (which
we were too young to watch, but his parent’s were much more lenient) with
tropical plant surrounding the water as steam rose from the water. Scuba Viper and
Toxo-Viper would be hiding behind the waterfall, but Wetsuit and Deep Six would
be waiting on the ledge above ready to get the drop on those Cobra bozos. If
the fight with the Real American Heroes found the Vipers caught in the water
jet whirlpool, they could always count on Undertow to swoop in and pull them
out to fight another day. It was seriously the most fun I’ve had with action figures
in my life. By the time we were done saving the world from Cobra Commander and Serpentor’s goons, we were pruney and tired, so we made our way to Erik’s room.

I never dreaded bedtime there, because in the morning I knew
a special treat was waiting, sugar cereal! The only morning meal I ever got to
splash milk on at home was Cheerios, Corn Flakes or if I was lucky, Rice Krispies, so the
promise of something with flavor and color was a big deal. Cap’n Crunch! Fruit
Loops! Frosted Flakes! I had seen the commercials, now I could join the
fun. It was even better when we got to choose our own sample sized box to eat
from.

To close out our sleepover adventure we tuned in to a couple
of our favorite Saturday Morning cartoons. First up was usually something like
Captain N or the oddly-titled, The Adventures of Super Mario Brothers 3 that lead into an episode of ProStars. The
animated adventures of Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky and Bo Jackson wasn’t my
first choice, but Erik was the real sports fan rooting for the Denver Broncos
and L.A. Kings. The show did eventually hook me by virtue of the fact that
their sports equipment doubled as weapons. I have to admit that “The Great One”
making a hockey stick appear from his bracelet was pretty cool.

By 11am it was pretty obvious we’d had enough of each other,
since Erik would start giving me dead arms to pass the time. My Mom would pick
me up and we’d say good-bye until the school bell rang on Monday morning. Fast
food, video games, action figures, cartoons and sugar cereal, this is literally
the top 5 on any kids top 10 list, with the rest of the list consisting mostly of
different types of candy. The sleepover was the best of the best. I do think I
should clarify that girls participated in “Slumber Parties”, while boys wouldn’t be caught dead referring to their overnight event in any such terms.
But if there was an equivalent to a Slumber Party for boys, it was definitely
the birthday party sleepover.

One on one was awesome, but getting 6 or more pre-teen boys
together fueled by root beer and pizza was the elementary school equivalent of
a frat party. Every kid there is trying to outdo the other in belching
contests, wrestling moves and high scores on video games. Of course you were
also trying to keep your buddy’s little sister from ruining the fun. Not that anything
they were doing was actually spoiling the party, but just the presence of a
girl was threatening at that age. Really though, it was all about getting into
trouble and this where I realized my wife’s concerns were totally valid.

Every “bad influence” in my life was introduced to me at a
sleepover. Dirty jokes, yep. You ever hear the one about the 3 guys who wanted
to marry the farmer’s daughter? Ultra-violent Rated R movies? Oh yeah. You know
Robocop is fine for kids…WAITAMINUTE, did that guy just get his hand blown
off?! Is that guy melting in toxic waste then getting splattered by a car?! Yeah,
totally fine. Playboy magazine? You better believe it. You say your Dad has a
whole stack of them in his night stand? Now I’m not saying this is the only
place a kid is going to get exposed to stuff that’s inappropriate, but I dare
you to ask my wife what happened at the 2nd grade slumber party she
attended when the topic of “Sex” came up. Little girls are total pervs, is all
I can say.

In Junior High it got even more dangerous as in addition to
the “naughty stuff” above, I was actually threatened with legal action at one
point for activities taking place during an overnight hangout with friends. See
there was this girl I had a major crush on and she knew it, but her daily eye
rolls made it clear I had no chance. Unfortunately my buddies knew it too, so
that night while I took a bathroom break they looked up her number in the
school directory and left a message on the family voice mail expressing my love
for her! When I returned to our session of Mortal Kombat II, they were
snickering in-between decapitations with Kung Lao’s razor hat. Soon they
couldn’t hold it in any longer and jokingly told me that I might have a date on
Monday morning, but the reality was far from it.

I spent the weekend embarrassed, but it was nothing compared
to the moment during first period when my crush stormed up to me and shouted,
“Don’t you ever call my house again. My mom says that if you do we’ll call the
police!”. Thanks a lot, jerks! I didn’t have a chance to begin with, but now I
was on the “creepers” list too. Of course those jokesters still thought it was
hilarious. I can only imagine how much worse it would have gotten if they
had actually spoken to her. I might have had a visit from the fuzz that night!

So yeah, maybe my wife’s got the right idea. I can always
treasure the memories of those rambunctious nights spent with my trouble making
friends, but maybe we’ll let our kids get rowdy in the daylight hours under a
little more supervision. Still, the magic of the sleepover and the unknown
adventures to come is something I’m glad I got a chance to experience for
myself, even if my kids will be slightly sheltered in that regard.

How about you, what kind of trouble did you get into during
your childhood sleepovers? What are your best memories?

@comic_book_fan Yeah, it takes kids a while to understand the power of our words. For a short time I was jokingly telling people "I'll kill your family", then my buddy started saying it and almost got pummeled by a big guy who didn't get the joke. So "kill" was quickly dropped from our comedic repertoire.

@AnEarly90sMan Glad you could relate, dude. Maybe you can share some of your memories with us in an article soon. After writing about it I showed some ProStars to my sports-obsessed son and he loved it.

lol i can relate alot i remember one night me and my friend was arguing with this guy about who would win between wolverine and megaman so that night we called him and left a messade saying how bad wolverine would kill megaman but since there were 2 of us talking at the same time all you could make out on the machine was kill and behead and his parents checked the machine and thought we were threatening his life when we were just acting stupid about fictional characters. so they threatened legal action so me and my friend had to apologize to him and his parents my friend got the worse he had to write out cards for them i just had to say sorry and explain what happened.
and me and my friends had a big cabin in my back yard where we kept our playboys.
i will write an article about some of mine.

@Vaporman87 Yeah, talking about the "hottest babes" in school was definitely a topic during sleepovers. A lot of times we would go through the yearbook and rate the girls, but acting the encounters out with action figures is a great twist.

@vkimo If only our kids could stay in the sweet, safe glow of the SNES, but alas "That Internet" comes a callin'.

Yeah, I don't think I would let my kid do a sleep over. Kids could sleep over our house because I know I'd make sure it was all in good form. But with kids having smart phones at 9 years old I just don't want them all looking at nudie sites upstairs rather than playing SNES like I did.

Great article Hoju. This really hits home, as I am in the same boat as you.

My memories of sleepovers past are golden. We had a lot of fun, though more innocent fun. Probably the most ornery thing we did was squirt fake blood on my best friend's sister while she slept. LOL.

But we do live in different times. Kids are allowed to get away with far more than ever before, and if you don't want your kids possibly exposed to that, your choices are hard and limited. A great deal of the decision to allow sleepovers depends on the lifestyle of the parents of the friends, and that is not always an easy thing to discover. With the invention of the internet, and social media, you can get a little more familiar with the parents AND children, but even that has its limits (parents aren't always going to be forthcoming about their faults and shortcomings on the internet).

One thing that may help you better determine what to do, is to know that as your kids get older, you develop a level of trust in them. My daughter (our oldest) has been a very trustworthy kid and if she continues to be, she might be allowed a limited opportunity to do the sleepover thing. She has had a friend sleepover at our own house, and we are familiar with the grandparents of this other child (with whom she stays while in our area - not her parents). I would probably be okay with her staying at their house. But likely not her parents, whom I know very little about.

My best memories of sleepovers involve similar things to what you mentioned. In earlier years, we would enjoy gaming on Atari and Intellivision, the NES, and watching music videos. Sometimes we would enact drama in our school using G.I. Joes. I would be Duke, and my crush would be The Baroness. Later on, we would start our "careers" in audio recordings, making movies, and doing outdoor activities. They were good times for sure. And yeah, we would try to stay up as late as possible. Very rarely did we make it through the whole night though.